Relations Between ASUC And OSL Not Nearly Fixed

At the beginning of the fall 2003 semester, The Daily Californian incited outrage among many student groups when it broke a story about a series of ASUC budget mishaps that cost the student union upwards of $10,000. Student communities quickly turned on each other to protect their own funding, and the majority of the student body ended up divided and outraged at both each other and ASUC.

As bad as the situation was last year, our campus was almost faced with a worse scenario this semester. The Office of Student Life, faced with its own budget issues, attempted to change its no-cost policy and charge each OSL-registered student group a $40 fee to fund its required services. While $10,000 in losses to the ASUC budget was significant, forcing the ASUC Senate to fund approximately $20,000 in separate student group fees to the OSL would be unacceptable. This does not even account for the priceless loss of the freedom to assemble as a recognized group and to use public spaces that the OSL oversees on campus.

Intense negotiations Monday afternoon, led by the ASUC Executive Board, persuaded the OSL to drop the proposed fee. However, the fee would have been just one more way that the Office of Student Life has, in an Orwellian sense of irony, hindered student life and morale on our campus. Instead of fulfilling its mission statement to build learning communities, provide opportunities for student development, and create a diverse and empowering environment, the OSL has performed unnecessary and extremely stifling actions of strict bureaucratic restriction and over-regulation of student groups on campus.

Another example of the OSL overstepping its bounds can be seen in its recent problems with the Greek system. Certain officials both inside and out of the OSL administration have voiced, in some circles, the desire to make all of Berkeley's fraternities permanently dry. This policy had mixed success inside and out the Greek system during the alcohol moratorium two years ago. Some may argue that strict implementation of the law in fraternities and sororities is a good idea. However, the means by which OSL is attempting to bring these policies to action remain immoral and indecent.

Claiming the precedent to do so under the guise of a California state grant to the City of Berkeley which is meant to fight underage drinking among high school students, the OSL has enacted specifically restrictive and harsh regulations on nearly all aspects of Greek life. In doing so, the OSL has put an inordinate amount of pressure on the Inter-Fraternity Council in attempt to divide the community and destroy whatever power base it might have. This is a planned and deliberate attempt by the OSL to abuse its regulatory privileges and implement anti-Greek policies that it should have little to no sway over.

While some may disagree with the position of Greeks on this campus, the OSL's treatment of important outreach communities on this campus has also shown how separated its goals and actions have become from the wants and needs of the student body. Through the last few rounds of budget cuts, the Gender and Equity Resource Center, which is managed by the OSL, has borne a large percentage of the budget cuts. This has added significant setbacks to the goals of this very important group.

Also important to helping outreach groups are campus publications, which are meaningful from an education and communication standpoint. However, the OSL all but eliminated resources available to publications in this year's budget. Without OSL support, ASUC has supported these publications and is doing its best to support the wishes of the student body and improve resources available to publications.

Lately, the Office of Student Life has done little but alienate students from life at Berkeley. Unless the student body rallies behind its student union to reassert its role as the protector and proponent of student life on campus, campus life at Berkeley will never again be the same. Forcing the OSL to drop its taxation of student groups should not be the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning of ASUC's battle to reassert its autonomy and power on this campus.

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